As the year began I decided I was going to make this the year that I read and thought about the works of the poet Alexander Pope. I had only the slightest familiarity with his works and knew even less about his life. Two months in I have swamped myself a little, am a little overwhelmed but deeply, deeply interested in this extraordinary man.
I buy a volume of his major works, an audio recording of a selection of poems and begin. I begin reading but am soon reading them aloud to myself in the evenings to better hear what Pope had written but also to hear myself. I am in later middle age and I already know that the crystal sharpness of my memory is less indeed than it was. Living alone I an aware of a growing quietness, a failure to resonate; people are finding it harder and harder to hear me.
I began at the beginning. A first poem and his early childhood. A month in I know anti-Catholic legislation meant that Pope’s childhood years were spent at Binfield near Reading – very close to where I now live.
Then I read the ‘Ode on Solitude’.
I was caught by the soft sense of satisfaction, the value of place and solitude. And already the idea of good health, mind and body, as an especial privilege. Of which more later.
The Solitary Reader 